Gardening or weed removal is often tedious and tiring work. There are a wide variety of instruments to aid a person when gardening or removing weeds. However, many of these instruments, due to their designs, either result in fatigue, blisters or even pain to a user. Additionally, many of these instruments do not effectively and permanently remove unwanted weeds, damage plants being uprooted for relocation or replanting, or cause significant, noticeable and unsightly damage to the turf, garden bed or nearby desirable plants.
Prior art weed removal tools fall into several general categories:
1. Cutters which cut the weed above, at or below the surface; PA1 2. Pryers which engage and try to extract the weed, similar to pulling a nail; PA1 3. Claspers which clamp or grasp the weed with mechanical devices; PA1 4. Diggers which normally dig into and/or remove portions of soil along with the weed; PA1 5. Twisters which are inserted into the soil and are rotated to wrap around the roots which are thereby pulled and extracted; and PA1 6. Chemicals which poison and/or interfere with the weed's internal biological life chemistry and kill it, in situ.
Often these devices are mechanically quite elaborate, have many parts that move, can break, and require maintenance, or they have parts that can clog during operation and which require cleaning and/or unclogging which normally requires the operator to stop and unclog or repair the device periodically.
The failure of many of these tools is often a result of poor or haphazard design. Exact angles, dimensions and radii, shapes and designs are extremely important to prevent fatigue or pain to a user and to prevent damage to the root system of plants so that they can be removed in whole, without damage to the turf, garden bed or other plants.
Numerous weed-removing devices have been disclosed in the prior art, but none to date have incorporated the unique features and simplicity of manufacture and use attainable with the instant invention.
For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,619,856 to Davis, 1,931,773 to Sobol, and 2,378,459 to Beardsley disclose weed removal tools incorporating a V-shaped notch in the distal end of an elongate shank portion. The V-shaped structure adds to the complexity of the devices and to the cost of manufacture. Additionally, the V shaped blade or any blade-type device is designed to cut the roots of the weed beneath the soil surface, leaving a portion of the root in the ground. Mature plants frequently regenerate from the still buried and undisturbed cut off roots making these prior art devices irritatingly ineffective in permanently removing weeds and/or for transplanting desirable vegetation.
There have been attempts to design other prior art weed removal tools to loosen and upset the root systems of weeds without cutting them. U.S. Pat. No. 1,079,619 to Walton discloses a weed puller which is equipped with a pointed end for piercing the ground and a forked projection for gripping weed roots and lifting them upwards without disturbing surrounding plants. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,867,086 to Meixell and 4,723,802 to Fambrough disclose devices which are inserted into the ground and turned to disrupt the root system and surrounding soil and then attempt removal of the weed and root system. However, such devices fail in their objectives and often tear the roots, especially if they are power driven. Additionally, such prior art devices lack simplicity in their construction. Consequently, manufacture of such devices is involved and relatively expensive. Moreover, the construction of such tools rely on projecting and/or mechanically moving parts to loosen weed roots and are subject to deformation or detachment during use. Cleaning also becomes a problem because soil deposits tend to accumulate around the projections and/or moving parts and are somewhat difficult or irksome to repeatedly remove and/or repair. Finally, chemical weed killers, although often effective, are now being shown to have multiple dangerous and adverse environmental and human side effects.
Additionally, the prior art weed removal tools are usually provided with handles or gripping surfaces which contribute to user fatigue and detract from efficient use of the tool. Various gripping devices have been incorporated into prior art weed removal tools. U.S. Pat. No. 2,164,373 to Ayliffe, for example, discloses a ball-shaped handle for a garden tool. Sobol, in U.S. Pat. No. 1,931,773, also discloses a handle having a ball-shaped portion and Perkins, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,414 shows a conventional wooden handle having an elongated bulb shape. Such handle designs, however, tend to concentrate forces on small portions of the user's hand during use of the tool--increasing the likelihood of fatigue and even injury during repeated use.
Ergonomic handles have been disclosed in prior art fields relating to rotating tools including wrenches. For example, Ballone, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,460 disclose an ergonomic handle shape that incorporates an ellipsoidal gripping surface for a hand ratchet-type socket wrench. However, unlike the present invention, the gripping surface of Ballone, et al. has the identical ellipsoidal shape when viewed from the top, bottom, and sides, and as a result, tends to concentrate the dominant forward forces along a relatively narrow area of the user's hand, i.e., the top of the ellipsoidal surface, thereby allowing for fatigue, blistering or pain therealong. Additionally, Ballone, et al. do not address or solve the prior art problems in the weed removal arts as discussed above.